


The Symbols We Came to Love

by Im_Chamsae



Series: Robin Soulmate AUs [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Espionage, F/M, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24628651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Im_Chamsae/pseuds/Im_Chamsae
Summary: In a world where soulmates shared parallel experiences, and marks vary, two people with ever changing soulmate symbolic marks can’t help but wonder what happened to one another.Ever since Jason was born, he had a tattoo of a poppy flower etched onto his skin, his soulmate mark. When he was resurrected, he was surprised to see that the flower had changed.Ever since Ophelia was born, she had a tattoo of a red jay bird etched onto her skin. After her emancipation from the Red Room, she was surprised to see that it had been replaced by a red-hooded tanager bird.
Relationships: Jason Todd/Original Female Character(s), Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Series: Robin Soulmate AUs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774687
Kudos: 80





	The Symbols We Came to Love

**Author's Note:**

> Jason Peter Todd - Symbol soulmate-identifying mark.

Jason Todd had only been 4 years old when his soulmate mark first appeared.

It was rather hard to miss considering that it was etched on to the skin of his chest and came in the form of a bright red flower – a flower of all things.

Something that a young boy like him was rather annoyed and embarrassed to have on his skin, and his old man hadn’t exactly made it any better considering that he had teased him about it, calling him a little girl at times. Throughout his childhood, he had told himself that he hated it.

But truth to be told, he didn’t.

In fact, he had been rather curious about it, and even more so about the soulmate who was behind it.

It was clear to him that he had been relatively unlucky with his soulmate mark, his being one of the harder soulmate-identifying marks, a symbol mark. It wasn’t like a name, a timer or even first words mark.

No, his was an image.

An image of something that was supposed to mean something about your soulmate. It was like a puzzle piece, something that you had figure out by yourself before meeting them.

* * *

So, when he had been 8 years old, he found himself in a public library, the one closest to his place. He had quickly found a book about flowers and had proudly determined that the bright red flower on his chest was a poppy flower.

‘Maybe her name is Poppy.’

Satisfied with his findings, he had gone home that night feeling pleased with himself. Despite the protest and initial embarrassment that he had first felt when he first got his soulmate mark, he slowly came to accept it and began to cherish it.

He held onto it even more so during his darkest times, especially after his old man’s murder.

It soon became his light at the end of the tunnel. It was his only piece of hope left. It became his means of survival, his reason to keep living because one day, he was going to find them, whoever they were.

But then, the Joker happened.

And like most days, his soulmate had been the very last thought that had been on his mind before he closed his eyes. Only this time, it had lingered with regret.

Regret that he would never get to meet them.

* * *

When he had first been resurrected at 16 years old, he spent the first year as an amnesiac.

But after Talia had thrown him in the Lazarus pit, suddenly all his memories came flooding back and his soulmate mark had been the first thing he checked on.

‘Was it still there? Was it okay?’

It was still there... but it changed.

Now that had stunned him.

His once bright red poppy had now been replaced by a purple lilac.

It had shocked him; he hadn’t even realised that symbols marks could change. He knew that it had happened to Dick in the past, but his had been a name soulmate-identifying mark.

Did this symbol change mean that his romantic bond had turned platonic?

He had asked around to other members of Talia’s court, and soon found that his answer was a no.

Symbols could change over time. Like names, it was rare but not impossible.

Luckily for him though, it didn’t mean his bond had changed. It was a relief in a way but a part of him couldn’t help but wonder but wonder what had happened to his soulmate to elicit a change like this.

He would had set out to find them, but like most of his life, his past had come catching up to him and soon he was too busy to look. Yet, he kept it close to his heart.

* * *

It had been during a weaponry dealing with a supplier when the former MI6 agent, ‘Harry’, had spotted his soulmate mark.

Look, it hadn’t been his fault that his suit just happened to get cut right at where his mark was, making it easily seen to every and anyone. He had been careless in a fight before their meeting, and to be fair, he had been ambushed by a least thirty armed men. So, sue him for getting his costume a little knifed here and there.

“That’s an interesting flower you got there,” the older man noted, a hint of amusement in his tone. “ _Syringa vulgaris_ – also known as ‘the siren flower.’”

He shrugged in response, “it used to be a poppy. Maybe it’s her name.”

“Or maybe, another piece of the puzzle,” supplied ‘Harry’. “Symbol marks are always going to be hard. Sure, her name could be ‘Poppy’ but it could also indicate something else, like opium.”

“Opium?” He was not impressed by the British man. Was he seriously trying to undermine his soulmate mark?

He felt the slight urge to bury a bullet in the back of the man’s head, but he didn’t because he liked his work. His gun crafting was one of a kind, but still... it didn’t mean that he had to take the man’s comments. His fingers twitched.

“Opium, ophie, Ophelia...” a sudden realisation drew onto the older man’s face as he swore beneath his breath. He turned to look at his client, “Tell me, Mister Hood, have you ever heard of Ophelia Hargreeves, aka, ‘the Siren’?”

It was rare for Jason to ask him for anything, but when he had mentioned potential soulmate, the younger male was all for it. Even he was curious to see who his soulmate was.

Ophelia Hargreeves.

It didn’t take very long for Tim to dig out her entire background history, and boy did she have a lot of it.

A lot of it that was almost incredibly similar to Jason’s, he almost winced from reading it.

Jason had died when he was 13 years old as Robin in an explosion. On the very same day and at the very same time, her family had been killed in a car accident in Moscow, Russia, while on vacation. She was assumed dead.

She had only been 9 years old.

When Jason was later resurrected at 16 years old, around the time he estimated that he got resurrected, she had been found and saved from a sort of Russian spy soldier programme at 12 years old.

At 19 years old, he had come back to Gotham and was calling himself, the Red Hood. At 15 years old, she had been recruited into MI6’s shadow program, and took on the code field name, the Siren.

Her on-record soulmate mark, a red-hooded tanager bird.

As of right now, Jason was 22 years old, alive but listed as dead. Unfortunately, there were no further records after she had turned 17 years old because she had ‘supposedly’ died in an explosion a few months ago. She was killed in action, or so the records say.

The mark on Jason’s chest said otherwise.

“So, no leads?”

“Not unless you know how to access deeper into MI6’s records.” Remarked Tim, dryly.

At that, Jason smirked. “Or unless you know a guy who knows a little too much about his former agency and doesn’t mind ratting his mouth off.” He pulled out his phone.

_“What’s this? Need a new shipment so soon?”_

“Nope, just called to ask about Ophelia. You wouldn’t happen to know where she is right now, do you?”

 _“Ah, well,”_ said ‘Harry’, _“she’s dead. She’s a ghost now.”_

“Harry,”

 _“I don’t mean ‘ghost’ ghost by the way, Mister Hood.”_ He hung up.

At that, Tim’s eyes widened with realisation. “I got it.”

“Got what, replacement?”

“She’s working undercover.” He pulled out a file of listed terrorist organisations. “She became a ghost, a literal ghost, Jason.” He told him. “She’s working undercover as a double agent within a terrorist organisation.”

He looked at the folder and nodded. “Send that to me.” He started to walk away.

“Where are you going?”

“Oh, you know, to chase my destiny.”

* * *

She was born with it.

A little red jay bird tattooed across her chest.

It meant that her soulmate was already around and most likely older than her. Ever since she could remember, her grandfather had told her that she was lucky. Red birds symbolised warmth, life and energy. It probably meant that her soulmate had all three, whoever they were.

Because of that, she had grown up happily as a child filled with excitement to meet her soulmate in the future.

But like they say, life was sometimes unpredictable and unexplainably cruel.

* * *

When she was 9 years old, Ophelia Hargreeves had died in a car crash. The very same one that took the life of her parents and grandfather, robbing her of her family.

Although she had survived the crash, she was never the same after they had kidnapped her and took her away from everything she had known.

They had called it the Red Room.

* * *

It had been four years later when she was 12 years old, and had been one of the various young girls that had been emancipated from the program.

By that time, she was already a shadow of her former self. A girl who had been broken from the harsh reality of the world. She had learnt the hard way that there was no such thing as a happy ending.

* * *

Following her return back to her home country, she was deemed too broken and dangerous to be left alone so when she was 15 years old, she had been placed under an MI6 shadow program, one that would keep an eye on her but also one that would utilise her skills to their advantage. They had seen it as a winning situation for everyone.

They had given her the name, Siren.

It was during the process of completing her agent profile when they had asked to photograph her soulmate mark. It was to be used as a primary form of identification in case she was to die in the field. It would be something that would help them to ID her body.

So, she had let them photograph it, only to realise that her little red jay bird was gone.

In its place was a different bird, a bigger one – a red-hooded tanager, a symbol that changes are imminent.

How ironic it was that.

* * *

When she was 17 years old, she had been called to her superior’s office.

The meeting had been sudden but she was told it was urgent and of the upmost importance.

And urgent it had been.

“You’re going to die.” Her superior told her emotionlessly, pushing a file up for her to see.

She picked it up. Inside it, her superior had gone into great detail about the means and circumstances of her death, and exactly what was expected of her once she ‘died’.

An infiltration. Something that she excelled well at.

“May you rest in peace.”

A month later, the Siren died in an operation gone wrong. Her body destroyed and completely blown to pieces in an unexpected bomb explosion. In its place, an empty casket was lower into the ground next to where her family had been buried. People briefly mourned, but then they moved on and soon she was forgotten.

* * *

It had been two years after her supposed death, two years in deep undercover when they had finally crossed paths.

It had been a quick assassination, one that was to take place during a charity open air orchestra performance under the request of her current employer.

The man had gone down relatively easily. All it had taken was a single long-range sniper shot, timed exactly to hit her target during the climax of the orchestra piece, thereby effectively drowning out the sounds of her gun going off.

Ophelia had been ready to leave, but had sighed to herself when she felt the cool yet familiar barrel of a gun placed at the back of her head. “Hello Siren.”

It was a fake voice, one that was probably being generated to conceal the identity of person behind her.

She chuckled to herself as she slowly put both her hands up, “I’m sorry but I think you have the wrong person,” she acted fast, catching the man off guard as she had managed to spin around and push him back a few steps, creating a distance between them. “The Siren is dead.”

The man wore a red metal hood as he stared at her in silence, his expression unreadable before he finally spoke. “That’s a nice tattoo you got there.” He spoke softly, his head tilting over at where her bird mark clearly showed from the evening gown she had chosen to wear for the event. “A red hooded tanager,” he told her before he reached to pull his hood off.

She felt her body tense from the move but it relaxed slightly as he lowered his hood.

His face, completely unmasked, stared back at her. “You know it’s funny, I have a tattoo in the very same spot too. It’s actually known as a Siren flower.”

‘Ah.’

“So, you’re my soulmate then.”

“Seems so,” he told her with a playful grin. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

She pulled out a gun and pointed right at him, he instantly mirrored her actions. “I don’t know, you did just pull a gun on me, soulmate or not.”

And then it was just silent, neither relenting to put their guns down, and neither willing to look away from each other either.

Soon the sounds of police sirens blaring across the night sky echoed into the background. She mentally swore, “I need to leave.”

“Sorry, sweetheart. I can’t exactly let you do that.” He told her, his blue eyes staring back into her own. “You did kill a man back there after all.”

She chuckled softly, “I’m sorry, but perhaps we should chat another time. I truly am in a little bit of a rush.” With that she turned and jumped off the side of the building, landing smoothly into the driver seat of her open roofed getaway.

She hit the pedal and immediately got out of there, but not before one last look at her soulmate. She smirked at him from her side view mirror as she drove away, leaving him standing where she had stood only moments before.

As Jason watched her go, he couldn’t help but laugh to himself.

Of course, his soulmate would be as troublesome as he was but he didn’t deny that he was feeling a little happy. After all, he didn’t mind the thrill of a good chase.

**Author's Note:**

> Can you just imagine the Red Hood trying to shake down a villain but failing terribly because has a bright purple flower tattoo in clear view? Because I sure can, and I think it'd be hilarious which is probably how this fic came about in the first place.
> 
> Second Robin down in the series. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading.


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